Student numbers at UK universities should be reduced 30 per cent, with cuts targeted at institutions whose graduates go on to earn the least and those with the highest dropout rates, a new report has recommended.
Research from right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange has found, for 15 of 34 subject groups, including sociology, creative arts and design, and performing arts, that more than a quarter of graduates earn less than the national living wage after five years.
In findings being used to turn up the pressure on universities, especially from the right, the data also show that, in 27 subjects, median graduate earnings after five years were below the national average for full-time employees. Of the cohort analysed, these 27 subjects represented 87 per cent of total graduates.
The report, Tarnished Towers: Fixing England’s Broken Higher Education System, calls for an end to higher education expansion and marketisation, claiming that “the failure of both is displayed in the state of the system today”.
It says expansion has “served to place people in similar jobs to those they would have been doing before, though now with an additional £50,000 of debt”.
